Launching a startup company is not for the faint of heart. There are always a million things to do every day. The code doesn't always comply. And we can always find more enhancements and features to pump out......watch out for feature creep, right? Well, we've managed to do all of this with a 4 person full-time team. In case you're wondering, yes, we are looking to hire more Ruby on Rails developers. If you are smart and know Rails, give us a call.

With our limited full-time staff, we decided to break up our launch in two sections....phase 1 and phase 2 (how original, right?). Phase 1 was to get the smart invite in the hands of our users. We wanted to hear feedback and see how we can improve the experience. Thank you for everyone who's given us critical feedback. Phase 2 will be coming around in week 1-2 of June. It's definitely right around the corner. We will add new features to the smart invite with full management capabilities. We will also be launching our geo-social search engine that will offer a new way to search for venues in your town.

We have not announced our PR release yet. We will be conducting our full marketing efforts when we launch Phase 2 of the Zoodango launch. In the meantime, use Zoodango to meet up with your friends...and tell us how we are doing!

Now that I'm married and have two little kids, I have to congratulate and celebrate 4 mothers for Mother's Day: my wife of course, my mother, my mother-in-law, and my grandmother. Wow! Then, I also have to invite all the spouses, fathers, siblings, etc. So, the big question is where should we go eat? The date is obvious....it's a single Mother's Day, but the venue is not so obvious.

So, here comes Zoodango to the rescue. It's time to send a Smart Invite and have every member of the family vote on where they all want to eat. Since it's Mother's Day, I will opt to increase the invitee status of all the mothers to "important" and decrease the invitee status of everyone else to "good to have". This isn't to say that everyone is not important, it's just that I want the mothers' votes to have more weight in terms of where we should go eat.

So now I pick out 3 restaurants after Zoodango calculates and suggests a few good choices based on everyone's "I likes" and then I send out a smart invite and ask each person to vote. Each person votes, and the overall score shows where the majority wants to eat. Since I'm the organizer, I finalize the most popular option, and then a RSVP link gets sent out and everyone RSVP's. Now, no one can complain about the venue! Thanks Zoodango!

A Smart Invite is a combination of an online invitation with collaboration tools powered by a personalized scoring engine. This combination is what helps you make social decisions on where to go and when to meet up.

There are many online invitations sites out there....like Evite of course, but they don't have collaboration tools and smart engines to help you make a decision with a group of friends. With Smart Invite, you can choose up to 3 combinations of location and date/time options and have your invitees vote on each one. After everyone votes, you can finalize the option, and then everyone can RSVP. With a system like this, you will have a much higher attendance because you take everyone's feedback into account.

I'll give you a perfect real life example. One of our users sent a Smart Invite for a "girls night out" event. She invited about 25 friends, but they all had different tastes on what constituted a great girls night out. So, the user put in 3 different types of venues for the Friday night....the first one was a laid back piano bar, the second was a hard core las vegas style nightclub, and the third venue was a combination of a billiards club with a little dancing. She initially thought most of the girls might choose the vegas style club, but when she asked for the vote, it was clear that majority did not want to hit the club, but rather, they liked the billiards club the most. So, she finalized the option of the billiards club, and everyone was much happier!

This is a perfect example of how Zoodango can help you. You can use it for almost any get-together!

So, what's the quickest way to personalize your experience with Zoodango.com? Well, we've made it really simple....all you have to do is search our list of 700,000 venues and find your favorites and click "I like it." If you can't find your favorite places, then email us and we'll add them to the public database.

By clicking "I like it," Zoodango's brain will begin understanding the type of place and location preferences for your profile. Now, when you or any of your friends use "Smart Invite" to meet up, Zoodango will calculate and suggest good places with personalized scores based on your preferences.

In addition, you will also see other people who like the places that you like. Ever wonder who else gets their coffee at your favorite coffee shop, well....it might be a great chance to meet interesting local people right near you!